Trauma is really strange

Hello everyone. This is my first time at one of these meetings and I guess that first of all I'd like to thank you all for listening and allowing me a chance to speak. My name is Robot. I'm inspired by all the stories of recovery and strength shared this evening and one day I hope to have one of my own to share with newcomers, people like myself who don't know how anything could ever be any different, but still hold out hope that it could. Right now, though, I'm on a journey: a long journey to health. My journey began when I decided to come here and hold myself accountable in my own healing process, when I decided to be a person first and foremost who liked growing things and dancing and attempting complicated baking recipes and simple ones, too; a person occupying space with ease and relating to the world through some other means than trauma.

To put it another way, I know all I have is smashed up, broken beyond repair. But I'm here in the hope of learning to make kintsugi.

***

Trauma is
a state that defies my attempts at an explanation.

Trauma is
like a disability, in that people sometimes treat me differently
if they know
if they find out
not always in a good way
not always in a fair way

Trauma is
living the feeling of hoping against hope that the movie character
will not enter the basement
when anyone can tell the killer waits therein.

Trauma is
finding myself beholden yet to the horror;
a yawning maw that does not care if I jumped in
or was pushed.

Trauma is
finding myself very well adapted
for life in a world in which I no longer live.

Trauma is
dissociation. My own relentless scrutiny
assessing everything I do, remembering and categorizing: I remain
among them but not of them,
assailed by rapid-fire symbols I am never sure
I properly understand.

Trauma is
lurching from one crisis to the next, because
drinking too much is the thing I have most in common
with lovers.

Trauma is
hating myself more than anyone in the world can ever hate me, but

Trauma is
simultaneously seeing nothing but antipathy. Contempt. Disgust.
those familiar patterns, repeated again, again, again,
and learning to shut the fuck up
because
it's my fault anyway,
nobody cares and I'm a pitiful embarrassment.
Same as it ever was.

Trauma is
wanting to forget; to choose something different
and not knowing how.

Trauma is
a whispered thousand part choral harmony
chanting as soon as I drop my guard:
you ought to have known
you could have done more
you should have been braver
what did you think would occur
what on earth is wrong with you
what did you think you were doing
why did you allow yourself such misery
why do you have poor judgement
why don't you learn
ugh

Trauma is
air that must be chewed before it
can reach my lungs;
going to sleep and awakening, thankful
I never remember my dreams;
fearing survival of a fifteenth-floor swan dive
more than death;
not really understanding what standing on solid ground means
but still trying to swim.

Trauma is
the ever-present danger of becoming the monster I fight.

Trauma is
crossing a line
only to find the underwhelming realization that 'healing' is not 'never hurt';
and that one day it will be a long time from now
and it is not yet then but
this too shall pass.

Trauma is
my best kept secret.

Trauma is
in everything of me, and nothing to do with me at all.